As more content is being produced in 3-D, the need for captioning, now mandated by the U.S. government, has been brought to the forefront. While all of the vendors in this category are aware of the need to do it, very few customers have asked for it, which holds back development.

“We certainly have the capability to produce captions in 3-D space, but we’re not investing a lot in R&D until there is customer demand and a standard specification for how to do it,” said José M. Salgado, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based SoftNI, a veteran captioning and subtitling software provider.

To be clear, the issue has to do with closed-captioning, not necessarily “subtitling.” 3-D subtitling is typically predetermined by the content producer and is inserted into a plane (below, on the side or on top of the screen) that’s most aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Because subtitles are simply a part of the picture, there is no need for new technology to transmit or display them.

Closed-captioning, on the other hand, serves a greater need and must be done uniformly. This data is sent as text with timing information by a broadcaster or program provider and turned on or off at the TV set by the consumer. There is a method for doing this in 2-D (called CEA-708) that’s standardized by the Consumer Electronics Association. Every TV set sold in the United States must be able to recognize this code and display it when required. In that code, you can still control the positioning of the captioning but not the 3-D depth. The result is that the 3-D experience is often not the best it could be.

read the full story here: http://blog.broadcastengineering.com/3-D/2010/11/22/lack-of-3-d-captioning-standard-stymies-development/